Percolation in suspensions of polydisperse hard rods: Quasi universality and finite-size effects

Abstract

We present a study of connectivity percolation in suspensions of hard spherocylinders by means of Monte Carlo simulation and connectedness percolation theory. We focus attention on polydispersity in the length, the diameter, and the connectedness criterion, and we invoke bimodal, Gaussian, and Weibull distributions for these. The main finding from our simulations is that the percolation threshold shows quasi universal behaviour, i.e., to a good approximation, it depends only on certain cumulants of the full size and connectivity distribution. Our connectedness percolation theory hinges on a Lee-Parsons type of closure recently put forward that improves upon the often-used second virial approximation [T. Schilling, M. Miller, and P. van der Schoot, e-print arXiv:1505.07660 (2015)]. The theory predicts exact universality. Theory and simulation agree quantitatively for aspect ratios in excess of 20, if we include the connectivity range in our definition of the aspect ratio of the particles. We further discuss the mechanism of cluster growth that, remarkably, differs between systems that are polydisperse in length and in width, and exhibits non-universal aspects.